Musings & Thoughts for Saturday, January 6, 2024, or: Weekend Update, Part the First (Snow Warning Edition)

Late Morning, Saturday, January 6, 2024, Madison, New Hampshire

Hello, everyone, and welcome to my 1,388^th post on A Certain Point of View, Too. As I begin to write this entry, it is a chilly New England winter morning: the temperature outside is 27°F/-3°C under cloudy skies. The feels-like temperature is just a tad higher than that – it’s 28°F/-2°C, but I still would not advise cold-adverse folks to wander outside sans “layers”, a scarf, hat, proper footwear – boots or a pair of good walking shoes, and gloves. The forecast for the Carroll County area calls for mostly cloudy skies and a high of 29°F/-2°C. Tonight, we can expect scattered snow showers and a low of 17°F/-8°C.

Speaking of snow, we are also under a Winter Weather Advisory effective from late tonight to tomorrow night because – to no one’s surprise – it’s going to snow tonight and tomorrow.

Per my Weather app on my PC:

What

Snow expected. Total snow accumulations between 3 and 6 inches.

Where

Portions of south-central and western Maine and northern New Hampshire.

When

From 11 PM this evening to 7 PM EST Sunday.

Impacts

A weak weather system will bring a period of light snowfall to the region. Although snowfall amounts will be light, travel will still be impacted due to snowfall accumulations on untreated roads. Even light snowfall amounts can accumulate on roads and cause dangerous driving conditions due to snow-covered roads

I don’t plan on going anywhere beyond the front porch today or tomorrow – my social calendar is clear, and I have not met Ms. Right just yet…not even a prospective one – so you folks can be sure that I won’t be outside and trudging about in the snow.

If I must go outside at all, though, last night I received a nice pair of Jansen boots that are appropriate for walking out in the snow. My friends in New York City, Juan Carlos Hernandez and his wife Adria sent them to me via Amazon. They look nice, and best of all, they don’t have shoelaces!  (Juan and Adria, if you’re reading this, thanks. I appreciate your kindness and generosity.)

On Writing and Storytelling: What’s Up with Reunion: Coda?

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I try my best to keep to a business week work schedule, meaning that I work on my writing projects Monday through Friday and take the weekend off to rest and relax. Of course, if I must take the day off to do something important, such as food shopping or going to Conway to get my New Hampshire state ID, register to vote, and all that adulting stuff – I do it, although I don’t necessarily feel good about it because it’s a “lost day,” and I’m not yet fully comfortable here.

Yesterday was a normal working day for me, though, and I worked on Reunion: Coda for a couple of hours. As I did in Lithia, I mentally set aside a four-hour block between 2 PM and 6 PM, hoping to work steadily for the entirety of that time – and maybe, just maybe, write some “fresh” copy after making the expected edits and rewrites to stuff I wrote when I still lived in Florida.

I did do the revisions and rewrites, especially to the last batch of emails between Jim Garraty and Maddie in the March 2000 section of the novel – my two “Present Day” leads are currently separated by 3,000 miles of Atlantic Ocean cos concert pianist Maddie is in London, recording a new album with the New York Philharmonic at Abbey Road Studios, while Jim is doing his history professor stuff at Columbia University.

The rough draft versions of the emails were okay as placeholders, but some of the last ones just seemed a bit…off and too mushy. I knew this when I wrote them back in November, but I knew I had to put the novel aside because I was – for better or worse – going to move and needed to focus on packing and preparing mentally and emotionally for the “From Lithia to Madison” transition.

So, between Wednesday afternoon and yesterday – Thursday was one of those “unexpected days off” – I looked over the epistolary chapter and tried to improve the emails between Jim and Maddie.

I don’t know, honestly, how well I fared at that task; I wish I had an editor who could make sure that the “Chapter of the E-mails” is, at the very least, readable. If I had the means, I’d hire one; alas, I don’t, so I must wear various hats when it comes to working on a novel, including those of author, editor, and publisher. (Thankfully, I do have a Beta Reader – thanks, Denise!) I think that the simulated emails have improved, at least in some respects, but I’m not 100% sure.

I was tempted to make today a “make up for the lost time” workday, but Stephen King says that it’s not a good idea to work every day of the week without taking time off to, you know, live life. So, I will try and be on “weekend” mode rather than on “author at work” mode.

The Sondheim Connection, or: “Send in the Clowns” and the Reunion Duology

If you are a regular reader of either of my blogs or if you know me personally, you may recall that music often influences my writing. It matters not if it’s a classical piece by Mozart, Beethoven, or Brahms, a cue from a film score, or a pop song, but music tends to inspire me when I decide to take on a writing gig. It happened when I had to write a story in the “novel” format when my ninth-grade English class was “doing” the “What is a Novel” unit at Riviera Junior High back in the 1979-1980 school year. It happened again – multiple times, in fact – when I took on the thankless task of revising, editing, and even rewriting a bunch of children’s books for a client who lacked talent and scruples.

More importantly, music – especially Billy Joel’s “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant,” the late James Horner’s music from Titanic, and John Williams’ score for Saving Private Ryan – created the emotional foundation for the first draft of Reunion: A Story. I got the basic idea for my novella after I heard “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” when I heard it for the first time in Billy Joel: The Complete Hits Collection – 1973-1997 (Limited Edition) 4-CD box set in the fall of 1998, and I wrote many of the set-in-South Miami High scenes while listening to the Saving Private Ryan soundtrack, which I’d gotten earlier in the year when I saw the movie with my friends Betsy and Richard back in Miami.

It wasn’t until I started writing Reunion: Coda, though, that I realized that Stephen Sondheim’s ballad “Send in the Clowns” – which he wrote for the 1973 musical A Little Night Music – also influenced the tone of both Reunion: A Story and the follow-up/continuation that I’m working on now.

Not only does the wistful tone of “Send in the Clowns” reflect my protagonist’s feelings of regret over what he didn’t say or do when he fell in love with a girl in one of his classes at South Miami High in the early 1980s, but I incorporated a fragment – a tiny fragment – from the song in Reunion: Coda’s Prologue:

The second time my mom tried to comfort me with “Time heals all wounds” was after my high school graduation. It was June 1983, and I had just graduated from South Miami Senior High School (Home of the Cobras). I was about to leave for Harvard – which is in Cambridge, Massachusetts – on a full academic scholarship to study history.

But even with all that to look forward to, I was heartbroken. I had fallen in love with Martina Elizabeth Reynaud – or Marty, as everyone called her. She was smart, friendly, and a wonderful singer with a beautiful alto voice and a charming British accent. And she was gorgeous – the most beautiful girl in our school.

We had met in the school’s choral group, and I had tried my best not to fall for her. But it was impossible. She was just too amazing. I didn’t act on my feelings when I had a chance, though, so she and I never became a “we.” My fault, I fear. And even though my mom tried to tell me that time would heal my wounds, I knew it wasn’t true. Some things just stay with you forever.

It’s a minor paraphrase, and if you’ve never heard or performed “Send in the Clowns,” it’s not easy to spot, even in a short excerpt.

Let’s play a game, just for the hell of it. Let’s see if one of you can find the “Send in the Clowns” bit in the selection from the Prologue. If you do, tell me in the Comments section below. You won’t win $5000 or a trip to Paris but try it anyway!

In other news: I still have not found my 4K UHD Blu-ray player’s remote, so I must wait till its replacement arrives on Tuesday… if I can get two AA batteries…to watch any of the unboxed Blu-rays I own that have no Movies Anywhere digital copies (which, sadly, is most of them). Oh, and last night my friend Julissa Rosen, nee Cabrera, purchased 10 copies of Reunion: A Story, presumably to give to friends and family, or maybe donate to a local public library. Thanks, Julissa!)

Well, that brings this blog post to a close – it’s almost 1 PM now, and it’s getting cloudier and grayer outside, so I better post this and get on with my Saturday. Until next time, stay safe, stay healthy, and I’ll catch you on the sunny side of things.